I usually write about books or at least about horror stuff, so this topic is weird for me. However, I'm currently on my... millionth?... rewatch of Gilmore Girls, and I don't know why but I just can't stop. It's mostly background noise for me at this point - I like a little company when I'm working or doing some other activity, but not company that I need to pay attention to. Thanks to intently watching the whole show right through several times, I kind of know it well enough to not need to tune in to enjoy having it on now.
But, for real, I think I might have a problem. I watch it from beginning to end, including A Year in the Life (even though I despise AYITL), and then I start all over again immediately. It's definitely my comfort show and I can't see it ever being replaced.
I think the writing is (mostly) excellent, to be honest. All of the characters are flawed and complex, so even when they're being dickheads, you can at least understand where they're coming from most of the time. However, I actually think that the real magic of this show is the world building. I've never wanted to live anywhere more than I've wanted to live in Stars Hollow. That town, with all it's weird festivals and celebrations, the weekly town meetings, and the general sense of community, is a cosy, friendly place of dreams for me. I wish it was real. It's the funniest, strangest, most colourful place in the world - the fictional world, unfortunately.
Outside of the lovely, familiar, welcoming settings, I think the side characters and supporting cast are outstanding - hands down the best of any show I've ever seen. Lorelei, Rory, Emily, Richard, Sookie, and Luke are the people I consider the "main cast", and they're all great characters, but honestly, given the choice, I'd want to be friends with Babette and Miss Patty first. I want to go to a town meeting and marvel at how pedantic Taylor is, and argue with him about moving a shed two inches. I want a friend like Brian, who writes a song for me in a sincerely platonic way and then is so awesome that he'd rather help look after my twin babies that go out living the rock n roll life. And most of all.... I want to be the frenemy of Paris. She might have horrible social skills rooted in self-esteem issues, but she is waaaaay more inspirational than Rory. She's the most dedicated and hardworking person I've ever seen on TV, and nothing made me happier than seeing how things turned out for her in AYITL. She was the saving grace of that reunion mini-series - and is responsible for my favourite GG moment ever. I lost it when she's in the bathroom at Chilton, freaking out, and kicks the door closed, wearing stilettos, no less.
I have to talk about the weird phenomenon of the fandom being super loyal to the show and somehow also quite hateful of both Rory and Lorelei, but especially Rory. I can't stress enough that what I'm about to say is nothing to do with Alexis Bledel, who plays Rory - she is so sweet and lovely. But Rory becomes a trash person, and I don't know why the writers did this!
When the show originally aired on TV, there were a few episodes on per week, so it took years to watch the whole show, and obviously there were gaps between seasons where we got no Gilmore Girls fix at all. It was regarded by fans as light and frothy, and Rory was a teen icon who appealed to a lesser-represented demographic of teen girls: the quiet reading type. Rory wasn't bothered about popularity, was quite comfortable being herself, had her priorities right, and was most comfortable reading a good book. She was super sweet, and ambitious in her studies, went on to a great school, had some ups and downs, and ended on a note of maturity and personal growth. To this day, the final scenes of the last episode (of the main show) make me cry. She made some pretty horrendous mistakes, like sleeping with her married ex, but the fans mostly forgave her because though her choices were bad, they were written quite realistically and were therefore believable. It was kind of fun to see the golden girl making mistakes, and learning from them.
And then, years later, Gilmore Girls became available on Netflix, allowing its original fans to binge-watch it. It also attracted many new fans, who binge-watched it. Before long, articles and YT videos about what a heinous horror Rory actually is started popping up all over the place. My flabber was ghasted - how dare they talk about my beloved icon this way?! So I also went back and binge-watched it. And then I saw what everyone else was seeing.
When you watch a few episodes a week, and time passes between them, you don't remember every little detail. When you see a season finale on the TV, and have to wait months for the resolution of the conflict-baiting conundrum, you forget how you felt in those moments that you questioned Rory's behaviour. In short, the original run's expanse of time sort of diluted her worst moments. But when you see it all back to back, probably the entire show in only a matter of weeks, all of her worst choices and qualities are crammed together and extremely noticeable.
It was only as I binged it that her patterns of behaviour suddenly became apparent to me. For example, she cheats in every single relationship she's in. She kissed Jess behind Dean's back, thus cheating on Dean and starting her relationship with Jess with a cheat. She has an affair with Dean when he's married. She kisses Jess behind Logan's back (and clearly went to see Jess to use him just for that purpose). The older she gets, the worse her relationship morals seem to go. But she's young during all these things, and there are emotional factors to all of them, so though yeah - it's bad - there's plenty of time for redemption. But then they made A Year in the Life - a much anticipated limited series released like a decade after the original show.
I couldn't contain my excitement as I waited for it to appear on Netflix. I couldn't believe that we would get to go back to Stars Hollow, catch up with everyone, and see where everyone had ended up. I had never been so thrilled about a new season of anything ever. But. OH. MY. GOD.
It felt so cold. It lacked the warmth of the original show, and I still can't put my finger on why. The quick, quippy dialogue seemed forced somehow, and the cosy feel that the show is so beloved for just wasn't there. The side characters were mostly all back, and once again, the highlight, but it's with the major characters that, in my opinion, the show totally effed up.
Firstly, Lorelei and Emily are STILL at odds with each other about the same old shit. In the finale of the main show, Lorelei establishes that though Rory is leaving, she'll continue the Friday Night Dinners. It indicated peace, growth in their relationship, and love, which is really what Gilmore Girls was always about. And yet, in AYITL, they're still treading the same ground and having the same arguments.
Lorelei and Luke are still together, but their relationship is weirder than ever. They never married or had kids, which would be fine except that in the main show, they'd both expressed the desire to do both of those things, and their reconciliation at the end suggested the happily ever after that they'd originally been on track for.
A full 20 minutes of one episode is used on the world's most irritating musical. I found it funny for a couple of minutes but Jesus Christ.... twenty whole minutes! If that isn't just a way to burn screen time without any substance, I don't know what is.
I have lots of grievances with AYITL but my biggest one is with the full character assassination they did on Rory. She's one of our two main characters and we're supposed to like her, so I can't fathom why the F they made the decisions they did. Not only was she lazy and morally bankrupt, but the way she was depicted retroactively made her character in the main show worse, because now we know where she was heading.
She hasn't learned from a single mistake. She's STILL a cheater, and an even worse one because now she's a grown woman without the excuse of lack of experience and immaturity to explain it away. She has a long-term boyfriend who she constantly forgets, and this is played as a big joke, but it's not funny. Paul is a nice guy and an innocent pawn that Rory has absolutely no love or even respect for, and she treats him appallingly. I don't know why the writers thought this would be amusing. She sleeps with an interviewee while she's supposed to be working, and then feels sorry for herself about it because the dude was a "wookie-costume-wearing-loser" that she had no intention of seeing ever again. I don't know what the poor guy did to deserve to be described as a low point, but it pissed me off. During her rant about this, she doesn't even mention her boyfriend, who she just pointlessly cheated on with a complete stranger.
But worst of all is her affair with Logan, who is engaged to a woman called Odette.
Odette is regarded as an inconvenience. She's mentioned a couple of times by Rory, and always in the context that Rory is the one being wronged. She's mad at Logan when Odette moves in with him, and butthurt that she can't just call him at any given hour risk free anymore. She's annoyed that from now on, she'll have to meet him at hotels, instead of staying at his place, which is also Odette's home. Odette is sleeping peacefully in the bed that Logan has been cheating on her in, and yet the focus of the sympathy is on Rory. What the actual F is going on with this storyline? The show ends with Rory pregnant. I think it's pretty clear that Logan is the father, but since she had a one-night stand AND had a boyfriend the whole time, there are 3 possible fathers. Which is kind of funny, actually, because in the original show, April had 3 possible dads, a fact for which her mother, Anna, was heavily judged for.
I've got no qualms whatsoever with consensual, casual sex, so long as no one is getting hurt, but that's not the case here. She's cheating on her boyfriend with someone who is seriously committed to someone else, which is two of the things she did in the original show rolled into one. She has learned NOTHING. And even worse, she doesn't care. She displays not even one morsal of guilt toward anyone on the receiving end of her callous, deceptive ways.
At least, I suppose, she's got a career going for her. When she left us in the main show's finale, she had her first proper job as a reporter on the campaign trail with Obama. She would get to travel, meet industry contacts, and work in her chosen field. She was off to conquer the world! It was so nice to see her in AYITL pursuing her... oh wait, no. She had ONE singular piece of work of note, and besides that, was just sort of aimlessly floating around unable to find a steady job. I understand that this is the real world experience of a lot of people in their thirties, especially people who work in creative or freelancing fields. I would have been happy with a storyline about how, actually, despite her education and work ethic, things haven't panned out yet. What I take issue with is that clearly, the reason it hasn't panned out is because she has no work ethic, and is so entitled that she still expects everything handed to her. The scene where she gets to Sandy Says actually boiled my blood. She understandably thought she was accepting a job, not a job interview, but her attitude once she realises is so unprofessional that I could see why no one else had hired her either. She's pissy, totally unprepared, has no pitches - which is ridiculous because she was going there to write... so what did she plan to write? - and her 'I'm too good to be here' attitude was so apparent. I didn't like Sandy much, but I was on her side when she changed her mind about having Rory work for her after meeting her for five minutes.
Also, how on earth is Rory broke? She expresses several times that she's broke, but we know that at the age of 25, she would have received a quarter of a million dollar inheritance from her paternal grandmother. Additionally, Richard has also passed away, and no one can convince me that he didn't leave her - his favourite person in the world - a substantial sum of money. I think this is probably just a plot hole and the writers forgot about the money coming to her - they did write the original show several years prior, to be fair - but it still bugs me to no end.
I meant to write a pleasant overview of why I love the show and just realised I've been on a full rant. I'll wrap it up. In short, Rory, Alexis Bledel, the entire show, and the fans, were done wrong with AYITL. Emily's arc was great, and it was wonderful to see Paris - the actual hero - absolutely smashing her professional life, as she deserved to be. But Rory... oh, my dear beloved Rory, why did they do this to you?!
And yet, despite everything I just said, I'm still watching it over and over. It still - for the most part - makes me feel happy and peaceful. It's on right now, in the background, even as I write this. For its faults, it's still wonderful, and I love it.
PS. Lindsay did nothing wrong, and it's always bugged the shit out of me that somehow, she's the character that gets booed at conventions by GG fans. Wtf?
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